#biblically inaccurate naruto?

[permetscore]

okay dammit im gonna write a meta about that fucking painting

dont you dare reblog this i’m not here to bully the artist i’m here to be mad about this on my own time in the privacy of my own social circle. op if you see this sorry it was beautifully rendered we just fundamentally disagree about naruto discourse

anyway lets get do this

ok so here it is which, if you’re not familiar is meant to parody “judith slaying holofernes”, specifically the version by caravaggio. here’s that painting:

i don’t pretend to be overly familiar with biblical texts, but to give a brief summary of the subject depicted, judith - the subject of this, and sakura in the adaptation - is a jewish woman who has taken it upon herself to slay the general holofernes - sasuke in the adaptation - to save her people who’ve since been besieged and forced into famine. here’s a slightly more in-depth explanation

now we know the context let’s talk about why i hate it

so first off like. the blatant naruto discourse issue. i love sakura (and ino, despite her lesser role), i do, but to act as if she’s been so betrayed by sasuke as to justify fucking murdering him is just. bizarre to me. beyond petty romantic issues (which, to be honest, she was in the wrong for! sasuke didn’t owe her shit!) the only issue she has of any justifiable nature is his attempts against konoha which, i hope i don’t have to go into why he was right and also not a threat to the average konoha citizen. 

this just comes down to a... feminist attempt, i guess? a woman slaying a man? which falls flat in my opinion without important justifiable context and cheapens the way women are genuinely continuously harmed by men. i’d almost prefer this if it was them as adults - maybe a critique of sasuke being a useless fucking husband. but this is them as children, specifically even before sasuke had made any threats against konoha. the best extrapolation i can get of his fault here is? not returning her affections? becoming a missing-nin? i’m not sure. maybe op just thought his first shippuden outfit was cooler so that’s what they depicted. idk

now let’s draw it back to the actual painting context - it is a very political painting, very much about protecting one’s people, and while the feminist context of a female heroine is significant, it’s not enough to be the sole motivator. so i guess the most interesting part of this would be sakura protecting konoha which. is. still awful we all hate konoha

ok now let’s get even more nitpicky. for.. some reason op chose to do this in parody of the caravaggio edition, as opposed to that by artemisia gentileschi:

she did several editions of this subject, and painted it after caravaggio, but in my opinion is a more well-known piece by her, so i’m guess i’m interested in why the caravaggio one was chosen instead. it’s typically considered the less ‘feminist’ one - gentileschi being one of the greatest artists of her time, and one of the only female artists at all from the time. in a way i am grateful in this context for avoiding it - because much of the context of the violence in gentileschi’s work is in revenge to her rapist, depicting herself in her own work as an active participant in revenge. which is inspiring and important but in this particular parody would be. inaccurate and unsettling. so i guess i’m glad that was skipped even if i find the caravaggio version boring and detached by comparison.

that said, even the original seems to make an implication of sexual assault - summaries of the biblical story imply judith’s seduction, but i don’t trust the power dynamic involved of a male general and a woman from the people he holds military power over. which is how gentileschi ended up at that logical interpretation of herself, even outside her own work directly. so i’m uncomfortable at the implication of sasuke being read as taking sexual advantage of sakura when if anything, she was pushing her affections more so onto him.

anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk about why naruto fanart annoys me. coincidentally i wrote most of this in class and these paintings were the class subject of the day. love the coincidence

if u wanna talk w me abt this send me asks or IMs im serious i dont want this post spread i’m not tryina attack the artist to their face this is entirely impersonal